If Jane Bennet is the happiest girl, Mrs. Bennet is the happiest woman, according to her ideas of happiness. Lydia and Wickham are superseded; Jane is promoted, beyond comparison, her mother’s favourite child.
Meryton soon hears the tale, and after having, only a few weeks before, when Lydia ran away, pronounced the Bennet household marked out for misfortune, now declares them the luckiest family in the kingdom.
One morning, shortly after Jane’s engagement, a chaise and four drives up to Longbourn House. The equipage and liveries are not familiar. The horses are “post.” It is too early for visitors.
Amidst the speculation thus aroused, Jane and Bingley retreat into the shrubbery, leaving Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and Kitty to receive the strangers, whoever they may be.
In a few minutes Lady Catherine de Bourgh is shown into the room. With the same arrogant ill-breeding which had distinguished the great lady’s behaviour at home, she now conducts herself in another person’s house, merely bowing to Elizabeth—the only member of the family with whom she has any previous acquaintance—sitting down, and in return for Mrs. Bennet’s fluttered attentions, putting her through a series of impertinent questions, and finding fault with the park and the sitting-room.
Elizabeth is at a loss to account for the unsolicited favour of her ladyship’s company, unless, indeed, she comes with a message from Mrs. Collins, but none is given.
At last Lady Catherine proposes that Elizabeth should take a turn with her in the wilderness, to which the girl accompanies her visitor, followed by an anxious direction from her mother to show her ladyship the different walks and the hermitage. As the couple go out, Lady Catherine opens the doors of the dining-parlour and drawing-room, and after a short survey, allows that they are “decent-looking rooms.”
The carriage stands at the door with Lady Catherine’s waiting-woman in it, announcing that Lady Catherine is on a journey taken with a set purpose.
Elizabeth leaves her companion, who is more than usually insolent and disagreeable, to begin the conversation, which she is not slow to do. “You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of my journey hither: your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I come.”
Elizabeth professes her unaffected astonishment and entire ignorance.